What are the effects of checking the ‘SYSPREPPED / GENERALIZED IMAGE’ checkbox when uploading an image? and what configurations are applied to the instance during provisioning as a result of enabling this setting?
VMware Guest Customization - Triggers a sysprep on an image (Windows), which sets things like the Local Administrator user/pass, and resets the uid.
Sysprepped/Generalized Image - The image was shutdown with /sysprep.exe -generalized -oobe -shutdown. In other words the user manually configured the event that we perform in the VMware Guest Customization option.
`Users do this as either a part of their typical process or the desire to have faster deploying and first boot machines. Sysprep can add several minutes on a typical deployment, so if the user performed it first you can reduce.
This does cause a bit of a pain for template management for the end user, as everytime they want to patch their template they will be met with the “getting started” or “fresh start” interfaces and have additional steps to perform.
To over generalize how Morpheus handles this, we still set the IP/Hostname/User Creds, it just tells us what state the image is currently in and if we need to send the sysprep command ourselves.
If you uncheck both - You will have to set credentials on the template that grants access. We aren’t modifying the local Administrator user and essentially not doing best practice with Windows and not performing a sysprep.